Extreme Faction

by Trevor Scott

  “Is that possible?”

  “I’ve read of such things, but I’ve never seen anything like this. It will be too dangerous to handle. Suicide.”

  “Does it matter?”

  The head chemist thought about that for a moment. Would his boss care how unstable the compound was? Even for them to mix it? Probably not. Results...that’s what counted.

  “It’s even more deadly than the Ukrainian said. He must have known. Why didn’t he tell us?”

  His associate shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t have time to. But we have all of his notes translated. Does he talk about controlling the molecular structure or guarding against inadvertent exposure?”

  The head chemist stared off into nowhere. He was sure he had read through every last piece of data. Yet there was nothing definitive about collateral exposure. Perhaps the Ukrainian had died too soon. Maybe Carzani should have brought him to Kurdistan until they had produced all the nerve gas they needed. Now, the question was, who should know what they had found?

  He glanced off to the storage tank that held over 50 gallons of the nerve gas in liquid form. They were about to go into full production and then ship off the product to storage sites across Kurdistan in villages similar to this one. No government would be able to find all the nerve gas after that.

  “What have we done?” the chemist said.

  ●

  Less than a kilometer up the road, in the darkest confines of the mosque, Sinclair Tucker lay on a bed of straw, his lower leg aching where the fibula nearly protruded from the skin. He had managed to block most of the pain from his mind by thinking of times he had been worse off. Like when he was shot in the stomach in Bucharest by the overzealous security agent. Or when he broke his shoulder from the thirty-foot fall from the building in Sofia while chasing a double agent who had just given up his cover. But in the end, the swelling and piercing pain came back. He had ripped his undershirt into thin strips and tied off rolled cardboard around his calf in a makeshift splint. If nothing else, he no longer had to look at the bone and the disjointed leg.

  Not that he could see anything at this hour. Since they had taken his watch after the crash, he wasn’t entirely sure of the time. The last call to prayer was hours ago just after sunset, and the chiming bells had even ceased at ten. He guessed it was nearly midnight. Maybe even one. But he couldn’t sleep. The co-pilot lay four feet away on a small straw mattress, something maybe large enough for a small child. Tucker had insisted the co-pilot take the softer bed. He was in much worse shape, slipping fast into delirium. Tucker could find no real visible signs of injury, except for bruises on his chest and abdomen. And he knew that was a bad sign. He suspected the co-pilot had broken ribs and maybe even ruptured his spleen. He had a fever now and would mumble incoherently. Death was trying to lift the man from pain.

  Tucker felt bad for the man. It was his fault he was here. Sure he was a soldier and had known he could die for the queen when asked, but it was Tucker who had gathered them to this rendezvous. The chopper pilot had already given everything. The worst part of all is he didn’t even know the man’s full name. Since they had been on a special operation, the pilot and co-pilot had not worn name tags. But Tucker had caught the pilot slip up once on the helo flight from Diyarbakir. He had called the co-pilot, Jet. A nickname probably. All flyers had them, as if they had been issued one with their wings.

  He only wished he had told Jake Adams what he was up to.

  Tucker shifted and tried to find a more comfortable position. But there was none.

  Suddenly there were footsteps on the bricks outside, and they stopped outside the large wooden door.

  Jet stirred and mumbled something, then went quiet.

  The door opened and a bright light shone in, blinding Tucker.

  He could hear feet shuffling closer, with the light shaking slightly, and then whispering.

  “So, Mr. Sinclair Tucker,” came a sharp accented voice. “It seems your government doesn’t want you back. They say they have no idea what you were doing in Kurdistan. Perhaps you can explain it to me?”

  Tucker leaned up on his elbows, squinting his eyes away from the light. This was a new man, not the same one who had beaten him after each bogus answer he gave for the first twelve hours after his capture. Not the man who had discovered he had a broken leg, and would kick it just for the hell of it. Who was this one?

  “I told your friend. I work for the foreign ministry in Ankara. We were looking for a British tourist who has been missing for five days.”

  The man with the light laughed boisterously. “You’re sticking with that story?”

  Tucker tried to shift his stiff leg, but he couldn’t even budge it. It was if the leg had a mind of its own, and wouldn’t let this new man know it was broken. “I cannot tell you any more than that. That’s what my government sent me out of the office for. I didn’t want to come here.”

  The light shook as the man moved closer. “You have a problem with Kurdistan?”

  “No, no. Not at all. I just feel that tourists have become a pain in the royal ass. We’ve told them to stay out of the area, and they defy our requests. They should suffer the consequences.”

  “If this was the case,” the man said, “then why didn’t your government simply call our leaders and ask us if we had seen the man.”

  Tucker had thought of this himself. A lie should be ironclad. “We didn’t want to offend your leaders by suggesting they had had something to do with the tourist’s disappearance. For all we knew, the person had simply run his rental car off the side of a mountain.”

  There was whispering again.

  Tucker didn’t see it coming, but a foot swung and smashed directly into the broken bone. Without even a scream, Tucker passed out immediately.

  44

  TEL AVIV, ISRAEL

  Sitting back in his comfortable leather chair in his lavish apartment overlooking the night lights of Tel Aviv, Mikhael Chagall, the director of Israeli Intelligence, was somewhat disturbed being awakened at such an hour by his assistant, Yosef.

  His assistant had poured himself a drink and was working up the courage to speak freely.

  “Well, Yosef,” the Mossad director said. “What’s so important?”

  “When we had not heard from Omri in the past few days, I started asking questions through other sources. The Kurds have cleaned house in Odessa.”

  “That’s what we figured they would do,” the director said, put off by the obvious.

  “True.” Yosef took another sip of cognac. “But the Americans are on the move. Jake Adams is heading toward Kurdistan.”

  Chagall knew not to ask how his assistant knew this, but he wanted to. He also knew that information was power, and the more he had of one, the more he’d have of the other. “One man. How much damage could he do? What about Chavva? Have you heard from her?”

  The assistant shrugged. “She could be in place already.”

  “She’s one of our best. She must be protected when this is all over.”

  “I understand,” Yosef said. “But what if she is...” He wasn’t sure how far he could go with the director, even though they had been friends and allies for years.

  “She will do what is right, Yosef.” Chagall thought for a moment. “And I only hope Omri has completed the equation and is there for her. He better hope so.”

  ODESSA, UKRAINE

  Quinn Armstrong was on hold. He had been for the past ten minutes, waiting for the Director of Central Intelligence himself to pick up.

  Checking his watch again, Quinn realized it was closing in on seven p.m. in Washington. The Director would be in his evening security briefing, discussing what the Agency would brief the president on the next day, baring events of the evening. Pulling him from that meeting would be nearly impossible, yet he had tried nonetheless.

  He glanced down at the phone. He had wanted to call secure from the office, but that would have been out of the question. He didn’t know who to trust, so he decided to
go straight to the top.

  In a moment there was a click on the other end.

  “What can I do for you?”

  Who was that? “I’m sorry,” Quinn said. “I was holding for the Director.”

  “Who is this?”

  He hesitated. “This is Quinn Armstrong. Deputy station chief in Odessa. I must speak with the Director on an important matter.”

  “This is Kurt Jenkins. I’m sure you’ve heard of that name. You can speak freely.”

  That means he was being recorded by the CIA Director of Operations himself. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t recognize your voice. But I’m not calling secure.”

  “I know that. What do you have?”

  Quinn quickly laid out what he knew for sure and what he suspected he had stumbled across. When he was done, he asked, “What should I do?”

  “You can go to Turkey.”

  “But—”

  “Go to our office in Ankara. I’ll leave orders for you there. Be careful.”

  Quinn was about to ask another question, when the line went blank. He slowly set the phone back in its crevice, slid back on the sofa, and ran his fingers through his hair. How in the hell had he gotten himself into this mess?

  He was about to get up, when the front door burst open. The first round hit him in the forehead before he even saw the flash. The second and third rounds from the silenced gun hit him in the shoulder and the stomach. Rounds four and five went into his thigh and ankle. Three more rounds hit the wall behind him and the sofa next to his flaccid body. For the average investigator it would look like a gang hit with random fire. However, the first shot would have been enough.

  The door slowly swung shut, and the shooter walked off down the hall.

  45

  ADANA, TURKEY

  Jake knew there was more to the story than what Agency Special Agent Steve Nelsen had briefed him on. The military had been like that, hiding behind the obliquely defined “need to know.” The old Agency had even been more obscure in its definition of who should know what when. Jake even understood that Nelsen had probably wanted to tell him more about the mission prior to their departure, but he didn’t like it one bit. He wasn’t even sure what their intended objective was.

  Sitting back in an old chair in the operations building on the first floor of the Incirlik Air Base air traffic control tower, Jake gazed across at the rest of the men. The six commandos were nearly identical in size and shape, dressed in dark camo, and currently spreading make-up on their faces like supermodels. None of them had any insignia on their uniforms that indicated which service they represented, or which country as far as that went. Yet anyone could tell that they were trained killers willing to die for any cause. Just following orders. They were good at it. They could have been Navy Seals, Army Special Forces, or even Air Force Special Ops. It was more likely that they were former military, Agency-trained commandos.

  Off to one side of the commandos stood Steve Nelsen and Ricardo Garcia. They were dressed in civilian clothes. Garcia could have passed for a Turk, but Nelsen looked more like a middle linebacker at a church social. He seemed out of place in Turkey, even though he had worked there for so long and was fluent in the language. His eyes were intense. His jaw locked tightly. And then Jake thought of his own appearance. He too could have passed for a Turk, he thought. From a distance.

  Jake looked out the window. It was completely dark outside. Only the red and blue ramp lights flickered like stars off a sea of concrete. It was overcast, with clouds and a light mist coming down. Either that, or the humidity, which was smothering, had escaped like tears from the clouds.

  In a few minutes a helicopter’s familiar whapping of air sounded in the distance.

  Nelsen came over to Jake. “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “I’d be more ready if I knew more.”

  Nelsen moved uncomfortably close, contemplating Jake’s words. “Listen,” he whispered. “The three of us,” he nodded toward Garcia. “We’re gonna take Baskale. The terrorist. They want him back in Washington to stand trial.”

  The helicopter swooped down and rocked to a halt fifty yards from the building.

  “Just like that? What about Sinclair Tucker?”

  Nelsen sighed and looked away. Then he turned back toward Jake. “The Brits are trying to work a deal. They got caught with their pants down, and they’re back peddling.”

  “I’ve got to find him, Steve. You know we’re good friends.”

  “That’s personal. If we’ve got time, we’ll look for him.”

  Jake knew that’s all he could hope for. He didn’t like it much though. “What else is going on here, Steve?”

  Nelsen motioned for the commandos to head out to the chopper, and they quickly picked up their gear and were out the door.

  “Their mission is to secure the weapons.”

  “You mean to destroy the entire village,” Jake said.

  Nelsen reeled around, pointing a finger at Jake’s chest. “God dammit. I’m not going to talk philosophy with you. They’re trained for a mission. Let them do their job. You of all people should understand. You saw Halabja. You know what chemical and biological weapons can do to a human body.”

  There was a strange look on Nelsen’s face. Something Jake hadn’t seen before in the man. A caring perhaps. Caring for something more than simple ideology. Perhaps Nelsen was human, and not the carnivorous asshole Jake had always thought he was.

  “Let’s go then,” Jake said without conviction.

  Jake and Nelsen and Garcia hurried out onto the ramp and ducked under the slowly moving rotors. When they were aboard, Jake and Steve were handed headphones by a crew member.

  On the way to the helicopter, Jake had noticed something interesting. The chopper was an Italian-made Augusta-Bell Huey, and had the symbol of the Turkish agricultural ministry on its side. The Turkish Army had purchased a bunch of the old choppers that dated back to Vietnam. They were a good old bird, especially in remote terrain. The outside might have been conventional, other than the bogus agricultural symbol, but the inside was completely different. There was high tech equipment everywhere.

  “The headphones are for internal communications only,” Nelsen said. “You can talk to the pilot and co-pilot and the crew chief...or me.” He smiled.

  “Great.”

  Jake heard the final clearance from the air traffic controllers.

  “That’s the last we’ll hear from the outside,” Nelsen explained.

  In a moment they started to lift off. Jake looked down to the tarmac and noticed a master sergeant in air force blues trying desperately to get someone’s attention. He was waving a piece of paper at them, as if they had forgotten something. Nelsen saw the man and said nothing.

  “What was that all about?” Jake asked.

  “I don’t know,” Nelsen said. “We’re running silent now. Nothing can stop us.”

  ●

  They had lifted off at three a.m. and had flown for over an hour through the darkness toward the east. Jake had checked his watch periodically and imagined where they were. They were flying just above the tree lines. They had caught the Euphrates River and followed it for a while. Not long ago he had made out the lights of Diyarbakir to the north, so the river below was the Tigris. The plan, as Nelsen had explained it, was to follow the Tigris until it was joined by the Batman. Then they would head north up the Batman River Valley. Just south of Lake Van, they would head east again, skirt around the lower foothills and head to the mountains above the city of Van. Nelsen had never even mentioned the name of the village they were heading toward. But Jake had been to Kurdistan many times, and he knew there were numerous villages that weren’t even on maps. It was the Turkish government’s denial of their existence.

  Jake hated flying in helicopters. He had done it in the past reluctantly. He wished they had simply piled into rental cars in a caravan to Van, but knew they would have never made it through Kurdistan at night without being stopped and questioned. Flying was the
only solution.

  Nelsen had opened up somewhat to Jake. He had his eyes closed, and Jake wondered how he could sleep with all the shaking and pitching. Garcia looked like he had seen a ghost. His face was pale, and he seemed airsick. The commandos were all sprawled over each other, snoozing like puppies snuggling for warmth.

  The pilots started giving brief comments about their location, the weather ahead, and estimated time of arrival. They were a little over an hour away. Crossing into Kurdistan now. Jake felt under his left arm the new 9mm Glock Nelsen had given him, fully loaded, with three extra magazines. He had stuffed the magazines to the inside pockets of his leather jacket. Buried into a secret pocket of the lining, was his only identification. A visa card. He could get anywhere in the world with that. Everything else, including his wallet and passport, he was forced to leave in the briefing room at Incirlik. The wonderful world of black ops.

  46

  KURDISTAN

  Sneaking through the darkness of the small Kurdish village, Chavva paused for a moment behind a stone wall that lead to the mosque butted against the mountain. She was tired, but wouldn’t think of sleeping. It was far more important for her to have that shaky edge. That feeling of pure energy that most would associate with hunger and fatigue, but what she had always felt as an inner power. Something like a wolf that hadn’t killed in a week.

  It had been a long journey from Odessa. After seeing Jake Adams at the Istanbul airport, she had taken the flight to Diyarbakir, acquired the truck, and rode the bumpy dirt tracks into the heart of Kurdistan. All the while she had thought of Jake, wondered what he was doing at the airport. Hoping he was still safe. She couldn’t get him out of her mind.

  She pressed her shoulder against the stone wall and listened carefully to voices from her past. There were screams of horror and wonder. How could this be happening? Tears rolled down her cheeks and she sobbed with pain. A pain that would end only with her last breath.